We love this musical Google Doodle celebrating Nellie Bly, a trailblazing journalist best known for going undercover in a New York mental institution and traveling around the world in a record-breaking 72 days. Throughout her life and career, Nellie Bly spoke up for women and impoverished families.

“HE’S one of the world’s biggest movie stars. But, in the late 1980s, Johnny Depp was the star of a new tv show called 21 Jump Street. A feature writer for Cleo magazine, my job was to attend a photo shoot that involved interviewing him and helping him pick out clothes from our stylist. Even then, the American star with the big, brown eyes and thick brown hair that flopped over his face was Mr Cool. He smoked, quite a bit, and put the ash in the pocket of the expensive shirt we’d selected for him. His socks needed a wash too, but his attitude didn’t need polishing at all. This guy had the moves - he was warm, humble, smart and funny. After the day’s shoot we piled into his limousine - he’d offered to give us a ride back to the office - and he kept up that cheeky smile. He was flirtatious and irreverent. I remember him telling me I had very pretty feet. LOL. And, when we arrived at our destination, he sprung out and kissed me. I’m not going to tell you where. Now I see him surrounded by paparazzi, I remember how, that day, it was just him and me, a stylist and a photographer. And a guy who was destined to be a big, big star.”

I’m pretty sure that most residents of the UK with a TV license have watched ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’ at least once in their lives. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure for the nation. I personally prefer ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ when it comes to trashy wedding-based reality shows, but each to their own.

On this show, there are two types of episodes: ones in which the groom gets the wedding absolutely SPOT ON, and ones where he just doesn’t. There are also two types of these wedding disaster episodes. There’s the ones where the husband-to-be blows all of the money he was given on a ridiculously expensive stag do, leaving only £50 and a spare tyre for the wedding itself, and then there are the sensible ones who simply don’t have the same tastes as their fiancée.

I pity these men, I truly do, because it’s not their fault. Chances are, unless they were heavily involved in the wedding planning process before the show, they don’t have a clue what they’re doing. They haven’t grown up being told that they’re going to get married some day and it has to be perfect. Their wives probably grew up being taught that. They probably played weddings in the playground and leafed through wedding magazines from a young age because that’s what society expects them to do. traditional gender roles taught men to seek success and a job, and women to seek a home and a husband. These gender roles are being destroyed piece by piece but they still remain as shadows. Shadows like the clueless grooms on our reality TV shows.

So don’t yell at the groom when he buys the wrong dress or gets the wrong type of DJ. He’s trying his hardest in a society that never showed him how to wedding plan because it was ‘too feminine’. This is a feminist issue. Men being comfortable with feminine activities is a small but necessary step to equality. So enjoy your trashy wedding shows, but don’t get too angry at the poor groom.

Unless of course he’s the first type of disaster episode groom. He deserves to be yelled at. A lot.

Today would be the 153rd birthday of Ida B. Wells. She was a journalist and civil rights leader known for condemning the lynching system. Take today to recognize her and take her advice on how to end the modern lynching system - police brutality.